Friday, March 4, 2016

Mailable Matter

Mailable Matter
Like early mail exchange in the American Colonies, following Cook's contact, mail in Hawaiʻi was handled privately by employing forwarders or by making arrangements directly with a ship captain. Hawaiʻi and the US agreed on a ‘Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation and Extradition, December 20, 1849;’ among other things, Article 15 of the Treaty created an arrangement for delivery of mail.
On November 2, 1850, The Polynesian announced it was keeping a letter bag open to receive letters and promised to place on board reliable vessels any letters deposited in its letter bag. By 1850, almost all mail was being sent to/from Hawaiʻi via San Francisco to enter the mail stream there and be carried in the US mail via Panama to New York. Hawaiʻi’s first stamps (issued in 1851) included a 2-cent stamp for the newspaper rate, a 5-cent stamp for regular mail to the US, and a 13-cent stamp for mail to the US East Coast.

About Me

I am a lifetime resident of Hawai`i. I’ve been in the private sector for 30-years, 2-years in County Administration and 4 1/2-years in State Administration. Our firm, Ho`okuleana LLC, is a planning and consulting firm assisting property owners with land use planning efforts, including environmental review, entitlement process, permitting, community outreach, etc.
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About the historical posts … in an effort to provide brief background summaries of various people, places and events in Hawaiʻi, I make informal compilations from a variety of sources. These are not intended to be technical reference documents; rather they are assemblages of information and images from various sources. In many cases, specific citations and attributions are often omitted. The images and text in various posts are from various sources and are presented for personal, non-commercial and/or educational purposes.